"A child's learning is the function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher." James Coleman, 1972

Friday, April 22, 2016

Reactions to NPR's Interview with NEA Prez

by Jim Horn

From my reading NPR's interview with NEA president, Lily Eskelsen, in the wake of the ESSA passage, some of NEA’s positions and prioritiesare made disturbingly clear.

First and foremost, it is clear that NEA’s aggressive marketing of ESSA
continues with the same bubbly and unrelenting intensity, entirely unaltered by
either factual reading or studied interpretation of the ESSA testing and
privatization plan.

It is clear, too, that NEA wants more data, rather than
less, in a dashboard of information that it hopes will replace the testing
thermometer.Eskelsen boasts that NEA “got
language in there” that even our best friends said, ‘You’re never getting in.’”
That magic new language that NEA’s intrepid negotiators insisted upon for the
ESSA: “multiple indicators of success.”

Does Eskelsen not know, or does she think that teachers
don’t know, that the old NCLB had the same empty rhetoric, except that it was called
“multiple measures:”

NCLB calls for
multiple measures that assess higher order thinking and are diagnostically
useful. However, these provisions are not enforced by the U.S. Department of Education
and are not embedded in most state practices. The push for standardization and
the requirements for quickly imposing "in need of improvement"
judgments and sanctions make it nearly impossible for states to implement an
assessment system that fosters high-quality learning.

Perhaps someone should tell Eskelsen
this, since she seems to count the inclusion of this same empty promise about
mulitiple indicators as a major victory for teachers and children.We should know, too, that with ESSA’s weakening of ED, any chance to enforce “multiple indicators” will be even weaker
than during the bad old days of NCLB.

And speaking of “in need of
improvement,” it is clear that NEA has chosen to ignore this continued school
crushing element of ESSA, even as NEA celebrates the end of AYP in a manner
that would be fitting if the bubonic plague had ended overnight.Yes, AYP is gone, but what remains is just as
odious if you are trying to keep your public school doors open in a poor
neighborhood.

You see, Eskelsen’s pretensions and
posturing about the end of test and punish are based on the purest of
fictions.ESSA maintains the federal
requirement that states test at least 95 percent of students, and it includes
no opt out provisions for parents.Additionally, ESSA requires that states continue to take corrective
action for the bottom five percent of schools each year, as measured by annual
tests.

What kind of corrective action will be
left up to the states, even though ESSA provides for unprecedented levels of
federal grants for “no excuses” charter start-ups and expansions.

Oh yes, Eskelsen does mention charters
in her interview.Seems someone out
there beyond Washington offered her some news:

The other thing that
we're really looking at, and this is coming from our state and local school
district affiliates, as people have now started to see charter schools as: Wow,
there are studies that say they are really no better, depending on which
charter schools and how selective they are, and they're not really improving
the public schools the way the original concept had hoped.

Twenty years after charters began
draining school budgets and 6
years after a national study showed the majority of charters as worse or no
better than the public schools in the same neighborhoods, the NEA has been
given this news by its affiliates.Since
the ESSA could have been more accurately named the Charter School Protection
and Expansion Act, it is hard to fathom the level of duplicity and
bone-headedness that NEA represents.If
they were as stupid as they pretend, that would not be forgivable, but we know
they are not, and that is reason for demolition of the entire corporate union
structure.

Finally, what is most clear from Eskelsen's
interview is that NEA will continue to do nothing with its billions 1) to
challenge standardized testing, 2) to confront and demand the end of segregation
in schools, 3) to use its lobbying prowess to end policies that continue
systemic poverty in urban America (besides handing out used clothing), or 4) to fight
for ending corporate control of public education.

It is clear that NEA will continue to
stand on the sidelines and wait for unfunded parents and teachers and students
to stand up against the corporate education reformists.No responsibility, no accountability, no guts—but lots of unearned glory
and vacuous celebration.